


The Origins of Magic: A Snape Memory

by ThePhantomTaleSpinner



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Childhood, Death, Family, Family Death, Gardens, Gen, Marauders, Memories, Sad, Sad Ending, Severus - Freeform, Severus Snape - Freeform, Snape's Childhood, Snape's Family, Trauma, father - Freeform, half blood prince, marauder era, mother - Freeform, prince - Freeform, recollections, snape - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28823979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePhantomTaleSpinner/pseuds/ThePhantomTaleSpinner
Summary: Severus T. Snape recalls his mother and the ways her life influenced his upbringing. After her death, he realized how far he fell and the kind of person he grew up to be.
Kudos: 3





	The Origins of Magic: A Snape Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, reader. Welcome to my page. These stories are based on headcanon material that I've developed for Snape's childhood. I've always been unsatisfied with the lack of detail we received regarding Severus's family, and so I decided to fill in the gaps and more fully flesh out his motivations and reasons for growing up to be the kind of man he was. Here you will find stories of loss, trauma, regret, guilt, and hopefully, some small beauties.  
> I have characterized Eileen Snape as a pureblood witch who rejected her pureblood family's legacy, running away with her first love Tobias Snape at a young age. After the birth of Severus, she attempted to distance herself from the magical world and its harmful politics, attempting to raise her son away from the Prince's dangerous Purist philosophies. However, life does not always go as planned, and her relationship with Tobias turned sour as he succumbed to alcoholism and abusive tendencies. She hid her magic for most of Snape's childhood which eventually resulted in her death when he turned 17.  
> Eileen Snape was a kindhearted woman with black hair and soft, ebony eyes. She had a deep talent for potion brewing and herbology, and often spent her days growing what they could afford in the Snapes' small backyard.  
> Her ability to love unconditionally was both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness.

The origins of magic are widely unknown. The question of its source is closely intertwined with the origin of life itself. It is a vast, unanswerable abyss. From the dawn of time, man and sorcerer looked out into the sky, memorized and terrified of its unending dark. The world rotated at a thousand miles an hour, unyielding and silent, floating, inexplicably in a monstrous, silent space. As humanity crawled out of their caves into the eye of a raw and merciless sun, they knew there were forces far too big for them to understand. Life was as pointless as it was monumental. It meant nothing at all and everything at the same time, and somewhere, deep within, entire universes bloomed within the hearts of man.

Severus's mother had always said that she thought that magic was the manifestation of those universes-- that magic was the embodiment of all that a person could be. It was faith. It was hope. It was the sobering and beautiful revelation that being alive was so much bigger than you thought. She said this as she twisted blooms together in the garden, her hands crusted with mud, and she worked as if she didn't care. Severus watched her dig her palms into the earth, working it tenderly.

Her garden always grew the fastest in the neighborhood, and when Tobias was not home, the neighbors would ask her what she used for fertilizer or put in her compost. Eileen Snape would just nod humbly, and say that her method merely included a lot of love. And Severus believed it as he watched her work the earth, soothe it, nurture it. It was if her rose bushes sensed the fullness in her heart and rose from their sodden, loamy beds to turn their faces towards her. This was Eileen's magic-- a meticulous and sincere kindness, a kind that made even the darkest, most lost men know love. She was powerful, and Severus never forgot her and the ways he could not come close to what she was-- the ways that no one, except one person could.

In the end, Severus realized that he had grown up loved by women who, by all means, had better things to do. He carried this with him for most of his life, as he scrubbed his bloody hands in the sink for many nights. He remembered this as he cast the killing curse for the first time-- how his mother had lived inside him for so long that he could not do it the first time he tried. When he finally cast a sickly gush of green from his wand, someone on the other end fell to the ground dead, and he knew she had finally left him.

He had heard it all-- there was nothing quite like someone screaming at the end of their life. It was not like any other sound. It was an unhinged, terrifying bellow. And he had heard it hundreds of times, heard it in his sleep, saw flashes of green in both explosions and the long sweep of pine branches.

When Eileen died, her garden dried into a husk. When she first explained what magic was to Severus, he had assumed that it was inherently good. He had thought magic made you a good person, a strong person. He thought it would make you grow up into a version of yourself you could be proud of-- that was what it meant. Now looking at his sallow and pale face in the mirror, everyone he knew dying or dead, he realized that not everyone was meant to grow up to be good. Magic sometimes embodied something ugly already inside you. And in the end, there was no running from that.


End file.
